You’re the only one who has to approve of your life and the style in which you choose to live it, but tradition, society, peer-pressure and the media etc, have us believing we will be happier once we have a desirable body, the perfect partner, our ideal home, a picture perfect family and our dream job that pays a six figure salary. However, it is not these goals that make you happy, it is the feeling of being desired, loved, safe, needed and successful that make you happy.

Therefore, focus on how you want to feel, then seek out people and situations that help create those feelings. Not what tradition, society or the media tell you to strive for. In other words: “Knowing how you actually want to feel is the most potent form of clarity that you can have. Generating those feelings is the most powerful creative thing you can do with you life,” as Danielle LaPorte so perfectly describes.

Another plus side of chasing your feelings instead of goals is you will open yourself up to many more opportunities. Rather than blindly going after one goal and one goal only, let go of the reins a little and allow the universe to step in and guide you. More often than not it will take you to something that is more awesome than anything you would have consciously set out to do in the first place. And if you’re wondering how you know when the universe is guiding you, it’s when life just seems to flow effortlessly, the right things and the right people fall into place and there is no question that you are where you’re meant to be. So let the spirt drive the material.

The sooner I realised that it was OK to show up everyday as me with my very own feelings, thoughts, opinions and presences, all of which are valuable in their own right, the sooner the universe began to offer me more opportunities of equal qualities just as the law of attraction promises – like attracts like.

I believe it’s no accident that you are the way you are. You have something of tremendous value to offer the world. But sadly too many people go a life time without seeing their value, which is often staring them right back in the mirror – as I mentioned before. Or worse, some deny their values, as well as suppress their true feelings because of the same opinionated institutions and influencers that try to dictate how we should feel in the first place. As they are worried they may not fit in or be perceived as not “normal.” FYI – you will fit in anywhere you choose to fit in and it’s more than OK to not be “normal.” Or as Dr. Seuss said “Why fit in when you were born to stand out.”

Finally, one of my favourite quotes from Sophia Amoruso‘s #GIRLBOSS is “The energy you’ll expend focusing on someone else’s life is better spent working on your own.” Therefore, stop comparing your life to others or seeing them as more or less than you and focus that energy into creating yourself. Keep reminding yourself over and over how you want to feel, the clearer these intentions form in your mind and heart, the less you’ll be willing to feel otherwise and unapologetically walk away from anything that jeopardies that feel good factor.